One of the things we talked about is awa. I told my brother how I wanted the grandchildren to understand that their great grandfather gathered awa up mauka. A boy of eight years old was given the task to gather awa for the old folks. Dad described the setting "the old folks would sit on their hali'i one that they would have had to weave." And he explained, "the old folks would fall over after they drank awa, or was unable to stand up."
I bought some Fijian awa and had two gallons of water in the back of my truck. My intentions was to take it to my friend in Laie to ask him how to prepare it. I was so shocked at the fact that my brother knew how to prepare awa. My family they are used to my projects..
So, I pulled the Fiji awa package out looked around for a container and my brother got cloth. At first, I did not know why he picked that particular kerchief. I was going to use my pillow case to strain the awa.
For the next 20 minutes, I watched my brother prepare the awa. A bit of water and lots of squeezing out the juice from the pulp. I was so surprise to note that he knew a lot about awa. It was amazing.
Next to our car was parked a multi-family from Micronesia. We were so estatic to watch one elder and five high school age boys snorkel as a village, paipai, and comb the whole area for fish. What is so sad the waters have been so fished out that it took them almost three to four hours to fish for dinner. As my brother explained the turtles eat all the limu therefore almost no Kala or other fish that feed on limu. We were given a Kala, not much words were spoken just exchange of smiles. We shared our awa. They were happy to meet someone that was from the area. Joshua naturally swam with the Chukees kids as if he was part of their family.
One of my intentions was to swim to Manana (Rabbit) Island from Kaupo and my brother told me it was possible, easy and showed me where to start. So, I will do it! Where the makai pier exist, there was a ko'a ten stories high built during ancient times. Pre-Kamehameha and my brother shared how my dad would talk about imu in the water to build houses for the fish near shore. I remember seeing this imu while swimming in the area when I was a little girl.
Without any prompts, my brother shared about my father explaining that our amakua was the mo'o. This type of talk is so forbidden! So, I was so surprised that my brother had this conversation with my dad. What's even more shocking my brother said that my dad described the mo'o as a steep hill at Haunama Bay on the Waikiki side and the tail would wrap around in the parking lot. I told him that our mom and dad before he was born would go to Hauanama Bay, but they would always get into an argument.
Wanted to share something from our family, with lots of aloha!
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